Optical fiber is increasingly being utilized for transmitting data, voice, and video information between telecommunication units such as computers, telephones, CATV head ends, televisions, etc. In particular, in systems having point-to-point connections whereby large amounts of information are to be transferred, optical fiber is widely favored over electrical communications media in view of the far larger bandwidth available for optical fiber and its immunity to electromagnetic interference. However, in distribution networks where individual telecommunication units are to be interconnected, optical fiber is not as widely favored since oftentimes the bandwidth necessary for transmitting the desired information between the telecommunication units is not extraordinarily large, and since it has proven difficult to conveniently couple light between electrooptic transducers and optical fiber. This latter disadvantage is most prevalent in local area networks, public switch telephone networks, and video distribution networks, e.g. CATV.